Monday, November 2, 2009

A Room with a View

We are in our hotel room in Burlingame. Smokey and Emma have spent much of their time out on the balcony, watching birds fly over the bay. I think they like it here, now that the sedatives have worn off and Emma has sort of stopped freaking out over the fact that Smokey smells weird. She tried to attack him repeatedly for about 2 days, but now it's just random hissing here and there.

The drugs we gave them didn't work exactly the way I had expected. We slipped them into tiny, ingenious snacks called Pill Pockets. Smokey, being Smokey, ate his right away. We could have put it on a chip, a piece of salami, or a garbanzo bean and he would have eaten it. Emma was not fooled, though. Rob had to hold her down and force her to swallow the pill. Not pretty.

Anyway, I thought the cats would pass out. But instead they just started yelling, and yelled all the way to the airport.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" yelled Emma.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" yelled Smokey.

Over and over. Then Smokey started bashing himself into the sides of his soft carrier. I was reminded of the warning from the vet. "Definitely test out the sedatives before you leave on your trip," she said wisely. "Sometimes they have the effect of making the cats more hyper."

So I confess that we did not test out the drugs. Obviously. But the bumpy cab ride seemed to be the worst of it. Once we got into the plane and put blankets over their carriers, they seemed to calm down. Or maybe it was just that we couldn't hear them.